Economic Actors and the Limits of Transitional Justice: Truth and Justice for Business Complicity in Human Rights Violations(241 Proceedings of the British Academy)

The rights of victims to truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-repetition when businesses are involved in past and present abuses are seldom guaranteed. A legacy of impunity has prevailed globally in which economic actors have incurred few legal or financial (indemnity) costs for violating behaviour. Examining cases in Nazi Germany, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Perú, the Philippines and South Africa, this edited volume traces business accountability efforts. It identifies the tools applicable to different country contexts that have facilitated corporate accountability for human rights violations, while also flagging the barriers that persist. This volume presents the past and the present of accountability for corporations complicit in gross human rights violations, and also considers what the future may hold.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures List of Tables Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction 1: LEIGH A. PAYNE, LAURA BERNAL-BERMÚDEZ AND GABRIEL PEREIRA: Conceptual Framework for Understanding Corporate Complicity in Human Rights Violations PART I: The Historical Roots of Corporate Accountability 2: LEIGH A. PAYNE, MARY BEALL AND AMI HUTCHINSON: The Roots of Corporate Accountability: From the Holocaust and Beyond 3: GABRIEL PEREIRA: Corporate Accountability in Argentina: Fighting Corporate Impunity in Provincial Transitional Justice Contexts 4: FELIPE COLLA DE AMORIM, RODOLFO MACHADO AND VITOR SION: Accountability for Volkswagen's Role in the Brazilian Dictatorship 5: LAURA BERNAL-BERMÚDEZ AND NELSON CAMILO SÁNCHEZ: Innovation from the Bench: Judges, Prosecutors, and Analysts Advancing Truth and Accountability for Conflict-Related Corporate Complicity in Colombia 6: MIGUEL BARBOZA-LÓPEZ: Corporate Complicity During the Peruvian Armed Conflict: Developing Archimedes´ Lever in the Case of Campesino Communities 7: HENNIE VAN VUUREN AND MICHAEL MARCHANT: Transitional Justice and Economic Crimes: Innovative Approaches from South Africa PART II: Ongoing Corporate Accountability Efforts 8: TRICIA D. OLSEN: Business as Usual? The Legacy of Transitions to Democracy on Corporate Accountability 9: KARINNA FERNÁNDEZ AND SEBASTIAN SMART: Complicity of Companies in Chile's Current Human Rights Crisis 10: NANCY R. TAPIAS TORRADO: !Berta vive, la lucha sigue!: Corporate Accountability for Attacks against Human Rights Defenders in Honduras 11: RUBEN CARRANZA: Transitional Justice, Corruption, and Mutually Reinforcing Accountability: What the Global South Can Learn from the Philippines Conclusion: The Past, the Present, and the Future of Accountability of Corporate Complicity in Gross Human Rights Violations Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Leigh A. Payne is professor of sociology and Latin America at the University of Oxford (St Antony's College). She has won awards from the National Science Foundation, Economic and Social Research Council, the Arts & Humanities Research Council, British Academy, and others for her research on human rights, transitions from authoritarian rule and armed conflict, right-wing mobilisations, perpetrators' confessions, and business and politics. She engages in a range of approaches from comparative analysis of empirical data to performance studies. Laura Bernal-Bermúdez is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Law of Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia. She is also affiliated to the Latin American Centre of the University of Oxford as a research consultant. She completed her PhD in Sociology in the University of Oxford in 2017. She holds an MSc in Human Rights from the Department of Sociology at the LSE. In her work she uses mixed methods to look at issues related to armed conflict and access to justice in contexts of transition for victims of grave human rights violations. She has won awards from USAID and Fulbright. Gabriel Pereira is a researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas of Argentina (CONICET), the National University of Tucumán (UNT) and an affiliated research to the Latin American Centre of the University of Oxford. He is a professor in Human Rights at the School of Law at the UNT. He was a postdoctoral researcher and a Knowledge Exchange Fellow at the Department of Sociology of the University of Oxford. He completed his PhD in Politics at the same University in 2014. He holds a Master Degree in Social Science (Democracy and Democratization) from the University College London, and a Law Degree from the National University of Tucuman. He has written in journals and in books in the areas of transitional justice, business and human rights, human rights, and judicial politics. He is co-founder and was Executive Director of the human rights organisation Andhes.

Review :
This is an insightful and wide-ranging series of papers with a compelling theme